Renal allograft immune response is influenced by patient and donor cytokine genotypes.

This study investigated the impact of specific cytokine genotypes on the incidence of acuterejection episodes (ARE), chronic graft dysfunction (CGD), and anti-HLA donor-specificantibody (DS-Ab) production in 86 renal transplant recipients and 70 cadaveric donors. APCR-SSP method was performed for the analysis of polymorphisms in TNF-, IL-6,TGF-, IL-10, and IFN- cytokines. DS-Ab monitoring of sera was performed usinga FCXM analysis. Observed cytokine frequencies for patients and donors were notsignificantly different from the expected frequencies under Hardy-Weinberg equilibriumconditions. The evaluation in recipients revealed a higher frequency of DS-Ab-positivepatients among the TNF- high (50.0% vs 25.7%), and for the IL-10 cytokine a greaterincidence of ARE-positive patients (35.8% vs 18.2%) with the high intermediate,compared with the low genotype. The combined effect of these 2 genotypes predisposed toDS-Abs (71.4% vs 25.3%; P 0.02; odds ratio [OR] 7.37). As for the TGF-1 cytokine,we observed a higher number of CGD-positive patients among high compared withintermediate producers (14.3% vs 0%; P .050). The analysis of donors revealed asignificantly lower incidence of ARE-positive patients among recipients whose donorswere carriers of the high IL-6 G/G-genotype compared with the G/CC/C-genotypes(16.7% vs 41.2%; P .03), suggesting a protective effect of the G/G genotype on ARE anda predisposing role of donor 174allele C. In addition, we noted an association between theIFN- low A/A-genotype and a higher incidence of ARE (42.1% vs 0%; P .002) andDS-Ab production (47.4% vs 12.5%; P .02) compared with high producers.